1104mcconnelBarely an hour after President Barack Obama invited congressional Republicans to post-election talks to work together on major issues, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell on Thursday expressed his commitment to stand firm on repealing or replacing Obama’s healthcare law, cutting spending, and shrinking government.

“The only way to do all these things is to put someone in the White House who won’t veto any of these things,” McConnell said in a speech to The Heritage Foundation.

After Tuesday’s elections resulted in a new GOP-controlled House and Republican gains in the Senate, Obama proposed a meeting with congressional leaders of both parties on Nov. 18 about how to make Washington work better.

But McConnell indicated that “if the administrations wants cooperation, it will have to begin to move in our direction.”

McConnell called for GOP senators and representatives to work to repeal Obama’s healthcare law by denying funds for implementation and voting against its most egregious provisions.

He was unapologetic for the unified resistance of the Republican Party to Obama initiatives over the past two years, saying that the party was opposing policies they believed were harmful and “gave voters a real choice on Election Day.”

Obama and Republican leaders did signal they might reach accords on a few issues, such as energy. Obama has abandoned his proposed cap-and-trade system for trying to reduce greenhouse gases, which Republicans sharply opposed. But he said the two parties might reach compromises on other fronts, such as promoting electric cars, nuclear power, energy efficiency, and “energy independence.”

Obama said there should be bipartisan agreement on a plan to give businesses a tax break by letting them accelerate the depreciation of some equipment.

But the array of Republican and Democratic post-election news conferences Wednesday gave virtually no hint about how Obama and the next Congress might tackle major issues such as immigration or Medicare’s long-term viability.

Leaders in both parties talked about cutting spending. But there was barely a word about cutting big programs that consume so much of the federal budget, such as Social Security, Medicare, and the military.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.